


Gone Away from Me

by justahufflepuff



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Character Death, Depression, F/F, Grief/Mourning, Severe Depression, breaking the baby, this is not at all happy I'm warning you now
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-18
Updated: 2014-02-18
Packaged: 2018-01-12 22:48:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1203385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justahufflepuff/pseuds/justahufflepuff
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Emmeline Vance is slipping.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gone Away from Me

**Author's Note:**

> My friend wanted grieving for Emmeline Vance for her birthday. She asked, I delivered. Albeit a few months late.

Someone has punched a hole through Emm’s chest. Gone straight through her lungs and down, pitting her stomach and hollowing out a home. It was a miracle they had left her spine in tact, a miracle they hadn’t touched her eyes and she could still see straight. She ached right down to her atoms.

Losing someone shouldn’t hurt like this. Breathing shouldn’t feel like such a chore every day, getting out of her now far too large bed no longer held any appeal.

Emmeline Vance was slipping.

She was slipping and she knew it. She could see it in Kingsley’s eyes when he visited she could feel it on Benjy’s fingers as he coaxed her out of bed for an Order meeting and pried her fingers open to hold a mug. It showed in the corner of her Lead Nurse’s eyes as the man gave Emmeline a Pepper Up potion for the third time that week and begged her to smile for the patients. When James had begged to get out of the house, to babysit for the night, she had said yes to ease the heavy tension between his shoulder blades.

The fact that they were all worrying about her should’ve been the push to get out of it. A war tore through the Wizarding World after all. A group of Death Eaters had dropped Dorcas’s body right in front of their old safe houses. They had come right up the front door and knocked. Her friends should have more important things on their minds than her slow deterioration. If she were any sort of anything she’d prioritize and focus on the real matters at hand.

She couldn’t. She wouldn’t.

Every night Emm went to bed terrified that she’d wake up forgetting the sound of Dorcas’s laughter bouncing off their walls. Dreams were the only place she could remember what Dorcas looked like happy. At night Emm could cling to the slipping sight of a small redhead sprawled out over the sheets, tracing constellations into Emmeline’s skin. She could curl herself around one of Dor’s old shirts and almost manage to pretend that this was nothing more than another long mission, that her brilliant shining girl would walk through the door and flop down besides her. The pictures carefully hidden away in their small apartment didn’t do her smile justice, the recording Benjy had done for their anniversary distorted from overuse.

Every morning she woke up clinging to a shirt that no longer smelled of her fiancée. Every morning she made two cups of tea, two plates of eggs, cut four squares of toasts into triangles. One set always went cold. No matter how long she stared at the food, no one sat down to eat it.

Grief pressed into every side of her. It sank deep into her bones and left her huddled in the middle of their empty living room, the ache so big and wide and gaping that she couldn’t move around it to call in sick. It grabbed words from her mouth before she could form them, robbed the tears from her eyes before they could fall. She felt raw from the inside out, tender to the touch and bleeding.

Every time she closed her eyes she saw Dorcas’s limp body with its unfocused gaze and open mouth, blood trickling down from her forehead, dirt on the cardigan she had so carefully picked out that morning.

She stopped closing them.

Benjy cried when he came to pick her up for their weekly dinner. Emm knew this because she could hear the sobs in the back of her head, echoing, and remembered feeling strange that someone in the world could still cry.

“I understand, Emm,” Kingsley said as he’d coaxed her into the shower and gotten her cleaned up. His hands were warm, safe comfort but entirely too large and calloused to pass for the ones she desperately needed. “We miss her, too.”  
  
Not like Emm missed her. No one missed Dorcas like Emm did. And that wasn’t even selfish it was true.

“But you’ve got to stop this,” he begged. “We can’t keep finding you like this, we can’t take it. It’s not fair.” 

Of course it wasn’t fair. Life had stopped being fair the moment they graduated. If life had any semblance of _fair_ she’d be married right now.

Her friends sat her down and made sure she ate. It didn’t taste like anything at all, despite the amount of spice she had seen Benjy throw in. All she wanted to do was curl up and go back to sleep. When she told Kingsley this he sighed and ran a hand over his head. 

“We’ll stay here tonight.” Benjy said, leaving no room for argument.

And that was how she gained two temporary, affectionate roommates.

They didn’t leave her alone. The bed she shared with Dorcas was large enough to fit four people comfortably and her best friends curled around her, brackets of worry holding in the indescribable mess of her loss. When she slept in Dorcas’s clothes they didn’t say a word. Neither of them touched the breakfast she made for her dead fiancée in the morning either. 

But the house wasn’t quiet any more. Benjy put up every picture of Dorcas he could find, papered the walls with worn down memories and sun-faded drawings that used to make her smile. Kingsley played all their favorite records whenever he got home.

She talked a little more. When they bickered she almost smiled. Benjy’s cat twirled around her ankles as she ran fingers over Dorcas’s well-polished broom.

The hole in her chest didn’t heal. Most days getting out of bed didn’t happen. If Kingsley didn’t have work he would read her books. If Benjy wasn’t home he’d make up stories on the spot and cuddle her close to his own scared chest. 

They weren’t what she _needed_ so desperately it panged but she loved them. Since she’d never have Dorcas again, Emm was glad to have them.

Kingsley and Benjy included her willingly in their open affections, pressing kisses to her hair and holding her close whenever they could, stealing away to kiss each other in private. She didn’t mind. Lord knows that she and Dorcas had been just as bad.

She would never get used to thinking of Dorcas in the past tense.

Maybe she never would. It wouldn’t be okay, not for years. Possibly not even after that. By now she had accepted that fact. But it wouldn’t always be this. Living with pain wasn’t the same as managing it. She could look at pictures of Dorcas and not feel desperate. She could wear her clothes without feeling hollow.

It wasn’t anywhere close to whole again. It wasn’t even on the same map. But it was getting there. She had her foot out the door.

That night, cradled between Kingsley and Benjy, she finally cried.

**Author's Note:**

> come say on [tumblr](http://enjoltush.tumblr.com)!


End file.
